![]() ![]() “What are you gonna do with time/After you’ve bought the farm?” P.D. ![]() When he sang about his own, it was full of just as much dark humor and lyrical precision: “When I get to heaven, I’m gonna take that wristwatch off my arm,” he sang. Over a joyous kazoo-filled chorus, he sings about making a handsome Johnny (his famous favorite drink: vodka and ginger ale) and “smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long.” Prine had found rich subject matter in mortality for as long as he’d been recording. The album included Prines signature songs 'Illegal Smile' and 'Sam Stone', and songs that became folk and country standards, 'Angel from Montgomery' and 'Paradise. Prine pledges to open up a nightclub called the Tree of Forgiveness in the afterlife. In spoken-word verses influenced by Hank Williams’ alter-ego Luke the Drifter, Prine lays out what he will do when he reaches the pearly gates: “When I get to heaven/I’m gonna shake God’s hand/Thank him for more blessings/Than one man can stand,” Prine sings, before laying out all he’s been grateful for: his parents, who encouraged his musical career, his departed aunts and brother Doug, and even his critics (“those syphilitic parasitics,” he says). Prine couldn’t have written a better epitaph than this, the final song on his final album. There’s really no such thing as a bad Prine song. I still tend to believe that’s the way to tackle it today.” ![]() So when you’re talking about intangible things, like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation. “Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. The opening track to Prine’s self-titled 1971 debut, Illegal Smile became an anthem for weed-smokers despite the songwriter claiming it wasn’t really about that. “I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks,” Prine told Zollo. But his interview with Paul Zollo for Bluerailroad is a master class in songwriting. Prine, modest about his talent, didn’t give a lot of interviews. Many emulated it, but only he could do it. His style, inspired by John Steinbeck, was deceptively simple. Prine wrote for working people, sad people, old people, and lost people. As he served in the Vietnam War and joined the post office as a mailman, Prine kept writing songs about his life: “Hello in There,” about the loneliness of an old empty-nest couple, the kind he encountered on his mail route, and “Sam Stone,” about a drug-addicted veteran who never really came home from the war, were just two examples. Even at that young age, Prine could channel humor and heartbreak just like his heroes Hank Williams and Roger Miller. Illegal Smile John Prine When I woke up this morning, Cthings were lookin Gbad seems like total silence is the Donly friend I Ghave a bowl of. In the same essay, Prine explains that the album opener 'Illegal Smile' was 'not about smokin’ dope. John Prine wrote his first two songs, “Sour Grapes” and “The Frying Pan,” when he was 14. ![]()
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